


Never Can Say Goodbye

by mindy_makru_tutu



Category: Ashes to Ashes (UK TV)
Genre: F/M, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:52:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindy_makru_tutu/pseuds/mindy_makru_tutu
Summary: Post-ep for 2.06. Gene responds to Alex’s goodbye letter.





	Never Can Say Goodbye

  _…Even though the pain and heartache_  
_Seem to follow me wherever I go_  
_Though I try and try to hide my feelings_  
_They always seem to show,_  
_Then you try to say you're leaving me_  
_And I always have to say no_  
_Tell me why is it so_  
_That I don't wanna let you go?_  
_I never can say goodbye, girl_  
_Oh baby, never can say goodbye…_

 _  
_ She hears a dull thud. Then an irritated mutter.

“…Bloody, buggery hellfire…”

Her head turns on the pillow. Alex sits up, half-asleep. She doesn’t bother to turn on a light or slip on her robe. She just feels her way to the door in the dark. He’s slumped against the splintered frame of her front door, lit from behind by the yellowing sconce in the hallway. The light bounces off his falling hair as he bows his head and cups one side of his face with one hand.

She blinks, straightening on the bedroom threshold. “What’s going on?”

“Luigi told me y’ locks were still broken,” he grumbles into his hand, “so I came up to kip on the couch, play guard dog.”

She runs her eyes over him. “And what? Walked into a wall?”

“Like I said—”

“Yeah, yeah. Two left feet.” Alex slops towards him, puts a hand on his shoulder and pulls him inside. “Come on…” She swings the door shut, wedges it into its damaged frame and guides him to a chair in the kitchen. “Sit there.”

Gene drops into it as she flicks on a light and opens the freezer door.

“Don’t think we have to worry about Riley anymore,” she says, taking out an icepack and wrapping it in a tea towel.

He gives a morose grunt. “Riley’s not the only scumbag out there.”

Stepping closer, she attempts to pull his hand away from his bruised eye. “Here—” 

He bats her away. “Don’t fuss, woman…”

“Just—” she slaps the ice onto his face, tells him to, “hold it.”

His hand covers hers, then takes its place as hers slips out from underneath. Alex steps back, sighing as she moves to the seat opposite. Gene glances over at her with his uncovered eye. Then, burrowing about in his breast pocket with his free hand, he slaps something onto the little table between them.

“‘Ere. Wrote you somin, an’ all.”

She fingers the unevenly folded paper napkin. “What’s this?”

“You said I ‘ad no poetry in me soul.” He stabs the thing with a finger. “Read it an’ weep.”

“You wrote me a poem?” She picks it up and opens it, brows slightly raised. “To what? Prove a point?”

Gene huffs tiredly, head falling back against the wall. “Bolly, no bloke in all of human history ever wrote a poem for any other reason than to prove some point or other to some daft bird.”

The edges of her lips twitch towards a smile. “And your point is?”

His beady eye cuts to her. “Anythin’ you can do.”

“How touching,” she breathes.

He snaps: “You gonna read it or what?”

She turns the napkin round, right way up, squints at his careless scrawl and begins to read. “ _There once was a woman named Drake_.” She glances at him from beneath her brows. “Original beginning.”

“Just keep readin’,” he mutters behind his ice.

She draws a breath, continues with a trepidatious expression: “ _There once was a woman named Drake, Who could be a right arse-ache_. Oh. Gets better and better…”

He glares at her one-eyed. “That’s enough from the peanut gallery.”

Her lips twist but she reads on. _“She came and she saw, she conquered ‘em all_ …” Alex hesitates, her smile beginning to fade. _“Then left…without so much as an handshake_.” Staring at the final line, she feels her eyes turn guilty. She lowers the napkin, murmurs in a quiet voice, “Well, the last line doesn’t quite scan.”

Gene looks affronted. “S’me favourite bit. I slaved over that!”

“Oh yeah.”

“Took me at least two seconds. And at least mine rhymes.” He taps the small pile of envelopes by her salt and pepper shakers, the one marked ‘Gene’ resting on top. “Bet yours doesn’t.”

She chuffs, sliding the napkin back across the table. “Don’t give up your day job, Guv.”

“Oh, no-no-no-no,” he mock insists, sliding it back towards her. “That’s all yours, sweetheart. Somin to remember me by after you skive off to wherever you’re always yappin’ on about skivin’ off to.”

“I hardly think,” she says, rising and heading for the fridge, “I’m in danger of forgetting you.” She secures the napkin to the fridge with a magnet of the Tower of Pisa then looks over her shoulder at him. 

“S’what they all say...” he rumbles, head lowered.

Alex hesitates. Then she steps closer and extends a hand.

Gene looks up, blue eyes wide. “Wha’s this?”

“A handshake.” She tilts her palm upwards, inviting his. “Just in case I don’t get to…you know….” her voice fades, her sentence failing, “later.”

He exhales heavily, drawing the ice pack away from his eye and letting it drop wetly to the table. “Think we both know,” he replies slowly and without looking at her, “I want more from y’ than an ‘andshake.” He grimaces at the linoleum, adds slightly lower, “Always ‘ave done.”

She swallows, breath held. Then retracts her outstretched hand and backs away. She leans back against the kitchen counter, hands resting on the edge and bare feet crossing at the ankles. The movement draws his gaze back to her but only to her legs, bare beneath her black satin nightshirt. They rake up the length of them with the same naked but resigned lust he displayed at Viv’s birthday bash. Alex ducks her head, drawing a breath in through her nose before speaking.

“You know, I have a dog,” she tells him, re-lifting her head, “back in…back home. My ex bought him for me as a puppy. An apology present for,” she shakes her head and shrugs a shoulder, “I dunno, not showing up for something. He never used to let him sleep on the bed with us. But after we broke up, I let him sleep with me all the time. Every night, in fact. He’s…well, not much of a guard dog, really. Just a sulky old golden retriever...”

Gene is silent a moment, eyes narrowed at her face. Then he sniffs and shifts in his seat. “Not sure ‘ow I feel about the inference behind that anecdote, Bols.”

Alex smiles at him, eyes glinting with affection. Her gaze travels to the bumped brow he sustained at her door. There’s a small cut, shallow but freshly bloody. The other side of his face has started to turn from pink to purple, the brutal blows Riley’s men delivered becoming more visible. She twists to open a drawer, ferreting around for a tube of antiseptic cream. She steps closer, falters. Then moves between his lax, splayed legs. This time, Gene doesn’t resist. He watches her squeeze some cream on to her thumb and smooth it over his cut brow. He lets her tilt his face upwards then sidewards so she can inspect the bruises from his recent beating.  

Her voice is barely above a whisper as she tells him with equal parts reprimand and concern, “You could have come to me, you know. You should’ve.”

“What for?” he grunts. “Kiss it better?”

Her lips part and head tips slightly back. “Yeah,” she answers after a moment. “Kiss it better.”

He stares up at her, unmoving. Alex makes a tentative move, the fingers on his chin sliding up to cup his cheek. Her other hand lifts, does the same to the other side of his face. Eyes focused on his injuries, she bends down, lowers her lips to his battered, weathered skin and kisses. Just above his brow first. Then, closing her eyes, she places a slightly wetter, slightly opener, slightly longer kiss just below his eye. His eyelashes flutter but don’t close. Gene watches her, watches her lips rise, grazing along his skin to press against his temple. She hears him breathe, heavy and uneven. And she can see in her peripheral vision his fists clenching, glued resolutely to his thighs. She kisses him again, right on the corner of his suspicious, discoloured eye. It closes, his jaw twitching and breath releasing.  

“Bolly,” he grits, voice strained. “I’m bein’ a very good boy ‘ere.”

She presses her forehead to his, whispers against his mouth, “Don’t be.”

His mouth expels an expletive of relief and hands lift instantly to her thighs. They skim up her body, over her arse, grabbing fistfuls of slippery satin. They move up her back and crush her body to him. He buries his face in her, breathes her in and kisses the rapidly rising hollow below her ribcage. She holds onto him tight, winds her arms around his head and neck and shoulders as he pulls her off her feet, as close as he can get her. Her shins and knees bang against his chair as she’s tugged down onto his lap, ravished and explored. His hands are all over her, on her thighs one second then on her face, on her back one second then in her hair. He’s overwhelming, solid and compelling and hot beneath her, his mouth making its way up to hers.

Long fingers find her face, draw her down to him. “C’mere…”

The initial contact is brief, shockingly intimate and electric. Gene kisses her again – and again, each time deeper, less strange and more familiar. Finally, he parts her lips with his to steal her breath and make her moan. Her breath hitches in surprise, her shriek muffled by his mouth, when he suddenly rises. She’s barely settled into his lap, barely acclimatised herself to his body, his proximity, his smoky smell and insistent kiss, before he decides he wants something else, something more. He plonks her on the table and a second shriek breaks from her lips, breaks their kiss. Alex laughs breathlessly as Gene glares at her with a question in his eyes.

“Ice,” she pants, pulling it out from under arse and flinging it to the floor, “The ice…”    

He grunts humourlessly and goes to grab her again. Alex pulls back.

“Wait.” She pats his chest a few times, tries to catch her breath. “Wait-wait.” She frowns at him in the low light, eyes flicking back and forth between his. “How drunk are you?”

He shuffles on his feet, hands on her hips and body between her legs. “M’not.” He tips his head to one side. “I mean, I ‘ad a few earlier. And I might be a bit concussed. But I’m not drunk.” He pulls back, frowns at her. “‘Ow drunk are you?”

“Not at all,” she says, shaking her head. “Not anymore.”

He blinks blankly at her. “So why we stoppin’? Things were just gettin’ good.”

“We’re not stopping, no,” she lifts a hand from his chest and waves it, “I’m just, you know, pointing out that if I’m not drunk and you’re not drunk then that changes what’s happening here. What this is. It isn’t just a drunken shag then, is it? It’s…well, it’s…something else.”

“You’re somin else,” he mutters as an aside before turning on her with impatiently raised brows. “D’you think maybe we could get back to what we were doin’ and ask a bunch of pointless questions about it later?”

She tilts her head, thinks then nods. “Sounds like a goo-mmph—”

Gene kisses her, drowns the rest of her sentence in tongue and saliva and want. Then he suddenly pulls back and makes her chase his mouth, chase him for more. Alex leans forward with open lips and closed eyes, her hands clutching the collar of his shirt. She breathes his name as he nips at her wet lips at unpredictable intervals and from unpredictable angles. She can feel his tongue and his breath and his teeth but she can’t figure out where he’s coming from or what he’s trying to do to her or how he may surprise her next. He seems at once both too far away and too much to handle. His mouth retreats from hers, lowers to her neck, attacks her sensitive flesh with avid tongue and teeth. At the same time, his arms wind around her hips, lifting her to the edge of the small table.

His mouth drags up to her ear, breath hot as he pants, “Lie back for me, Bolly. I’m gonna make a meal outta you.”

The air shudders in her lungs. But she pulls back, cheek grazing along his and heart hammering in her chest. She unfurls onto the cool surface, lowering herself vertebrae by vertebrae and gazing up at him through half-lidded eyes. Gene watches her every move, eyes glittering darkly. He peels off his jacket and lets it drop to the floor, unpins his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves. His hands land on her knees and creep upward. His palms spread at the top of her legs, thumbs stroking her inner thighs, brushing the dark hair peeking out the edges of her knickers. He doesn’t go any higher, doesn’t provide any further contact. Instead, he lifts his hands from her, grasps her legs behind her knees and guides them up and around his body. Her feet link behind his butt, encircling him.

His fingertips drift back up her legs then skip straight to the bottom button off her nightshirt. Moving slowly and deliberately, he undoes the button and lowers his lips to the revealed skin. Her belly quivers at the sensation, its newness, its teasing lightness. Gene undoes another button, kisses her again, a little higher. He undoes another then smooths both hands over her skin, up under the satin. It slides sideways off her body as he caresses her stomach and traces the curves of her hips. His kisses start to deviate from their course, spreading and multiplying. He kisses up and around and over her, mouth finding her waist and hipbone and a small dark mole just below her bellybutton. Then, fumbling slightly with the last two buttons, he parts the nightshirt to reveal her breasts.

At first, he just looks at them. Gazes at her, bare and breathing beneath him. “What a thing o’ beauty you are…” His palms slide up her sides and she squirms in his grasp. “And there they are…” he murmurs to her chest. “‘Ullo girls…”

She sighs, pink and impatient. “Well, don’t just stare a-uh—!”

He shuts her up again by swallowing one breast. He dives down and seizes it in his mouth, takes as much of it into that warm cavern as he can manage then sucks. Hard. He slurps it in and out, snakes his tongue over it, bites the thrilled tip then envelopes it again as if he plans on devouring her whole. Nothing about the treatment is tentative. Everything about it makes her pant and gasp and screw her eyes shut and arch her back on the table. He encourages the movement, gripping her waist and lifting her eager body to his mouth. He releases her luckiest breast, kisses all around it, licks the underside and nudges the wet nipple with his nose. She groans and offers her other neglected and aching breast for more of the same. It throbs with jealousy and lack and lust but he won’t leave the first one alone. He loves it and it loves him back, flushing with blood and shining with moisture.

Alex groans again, this time his name. Gene glances up at her frustrated face and shakes his head. “What kinda fool ever let you go…” he mutters before beginning a second assault on her unmolested breast.

This one is even more intense, with one hand still pinching and rolling and trapping between his fingers the nipple of her freed breast. She arches on the table, hands buried in his hair and arms wound round his head, holding him close. One hand strays down his neck, plunging down the back of his shirt collar to dig her fingernails into the flesh of his back. The table rattles beneath them, the rubber feet skidding on the linoleum. Her carefully penned letters flutter to the floor, the salt and pepper shakers drop down a crack and smash into pieces. Alex doesn’t notice. She just wants him closer, wants his mouth again, wants his hardness pressed between her legs.

She feels it nudge against her when she pulls his mouth up to hers, when he lies over her, mouth reclaiming hers. He kisses her deep, propped on one elbow with his hand tangled in her hair. His other hand skates down her body and slips beneath her. Splayed on the small of her back, it urges her up against him, rubbing her against his stiff groin. Gene groans and bucks against her. His hand moves down to grip her arse, hips circling wantingly through the layers of remaining clothes. His groans are tinged with frustration and, tucking his face into her neck, he mutters against her pulsing skin:

“Bols. Y’ got any idea…‘ow long I’ve wanted—”

He breaks off and she thrums beneath him, everything hazy and clammy and close. She turns her head, finds his ear and kisses it. She buries her nose in his hair and whispers, “So have me now.” She sucks on his earlobe, bites it gently. “Fuck me now.”

His head lifts. He stares at her with hooded, dangerous, sapphire eyes. They drop to her mouth, wait for her to speak again.

“I want you,” she adds, her hand caressing his bruised brow, his stubbled jaw and golden mane. “Please. Fuck me now, Gene. I want you to.”

He stares at her another moment then places a light kiss on her lower lip. “Oh, I’m gonna do much more than that.” He kisses her again, sucks on her tongue and adds against her lips, “I’m gonna take you apart, piece by gorgeous piece...”

He drags himself off her, stands between her legs with his fingers on the hem of her knickers. He pauses before beginning to peel them down, stepping back to drag them off her legs. Then Gene holds out a hand as if he’s asking her to dance. Alex puts her hand in his, lets him pull her up into a seated position. He steps closer, slips the nightshirt off her then lowers his lips to kiss her shoulder. She slides her hands up his arms, kisses his jaw and begins working on the buttons of his shirt. She moves faster than he did, tugging the shirttails from his pants then shoving the thing off him. She lifts the vest off him too then runs both hands up his body. There’s a nasty bruise on his right shoulder so she kisses it. More than once. She only stops when his hands move to unbuckle his belt and unzip his trousers.

Her head bows, the dark hair falling over her forehead mingling with the blond hair falling down his. She strokes his forearms as he pushes his trousers down, then his Y-fronts. She kisses his chest as she looks down at him, long and thin and pink and hard. She takes him in one hand as her other curls around his neck and draws his mouth down to hers. Gene sucks in a breath through his nose and deepens the kiss. He strokes her cheek with the back of his fingers, sweeps the hair away from her neck with a tender touch. Both palms drift down her back, resting on her waist before taking the ultimate plunge. One tucks behind her knee and lifts. The other slips between her thighs to break the bubble of moisture brewing at her core. His groan of surprise and satisfaction is muffled but she smiles against his lips and draws the tip of his penis to the opening that is so ready to be breached by him.

Gene breaks their kiss, puts his forehead against hers and pants, “Bols…”

Her eyes open and meet his, mere millimetres between them. “Alex, please.” She swallows and snakes her arms round his neck. “Alex, when we’re like this.”

He kisses her once, groans, “Aaaleeex,” as he pushes inside her. “Ah, Alex…” he groans again, moving a little deeper. He groans a third “Alex” with his third thrust and, in those two raw drawn-out syllables, she can hear every accumulated bit of frustration and desire, heat and misapprehension, affection and anticipation they’d waded through in two long years.

The name thrills her with its intimacy, reserved as it is for only the realest of moments that pass between them. It isn’t long though before he’s moving inside her at an increasing pace and his tongue reverts to the more typical “Bolly” and “Bols”. Gene stalls and opens his mouth to apologise, correct himself.

“It’s okay,” she laughs, stroking his jaw. “Call me whatever you want. Just…” she holds on tighter and kisses his frown, “don’t stop.”

He kisses her with his eyes open and resumes his rhythm. “Bolly,” he calls her, voice full of affection for the name only he calls her, for the dedicated copper she proves herself to be every day and for the posh bird he never planned on falling for. “Bolly-Bolly-Bolly-Bolly-Bolly…” he chants, losing himself in the feel of her and the depth of her and the absolute and willing acceptance of her.

Her arms and legs encircle him and her head ducks to one side as he picks up speed. She kisses his neck, shoulder and chest, breathes “Gene,” in his ear. And again, “Gene, don’t stop…” She can feel him losing control, enjoying himself inside her, fucking her the way he’s always wanted to. And it’s glorious. Incredible to feel him want her so desperately, to feel how absorbed he is in her, to feel him moving deep inside her. To feel him finally revealing the rawest, most essential version of himself. She tightens her inner muscles on him and scratches his back with her fingernails. Each thrust is forcing air out of her lungs and, along with it, comes a soft, wet moan of escalating pleasure and stunned disbelief.

He answers her with grunt of primal possession, and by clutching her slippery body close. Her legs are feeble and taut and losing power. No longer able to hold him close, one finds his chair and props a foot on the back. He grabs the other and folds it back on itself, hitting a deeper spot inside her with his hard, short thrusts. Her cries rise an octave and he tilts her back to get at her breasts, suckling their pointed tips. She slings an arm behind her to brace her flailing body, arching into his mouth and beginning to come. The waves start slowly then hit her hard. They make her head pitch back and her eyes screw shut and her mouth emit a long, uncontrolled, yearning moan. She feels him watching her, holding her, drinking her in. And only as she’s about to come down does his mouth drag up her swelling chest. He groans “Alex” against her lips, thrusts three times and comes within her.

She’s limp and hazy in the aftermath, cheek pressed to his shoulder and hands drifting over his flesh. She doesn’t register him disentangling their sweaty limbs until her back is once again against the cool surface of the table. She blinks up at him, watches him run his hands over her before pulling up a chair and scooting in close. He throws one of her legs over one of his shoulders, kisses her inner thigh then does the same with her other lax, compliant limb. She has no concept of what he’s up to until his face dives between her thighs and she feels his mouth on her sensitised flesh.

It doesn’t take much, just a few swipes of his tongue, a few scrapes of his teeth. She releases a sharp, defenceless sob as he traps her clit between his lips and sucks. Her whole body reacts. Her back beats the tabletop, her toes curl, her neck arcs, her thighs quiver and her cunt clenches in final ecstasy. Alex moans loud and long and curses him black and blue when he won’t bloody stop. She’s breathless and spent by the time he does, by the time he pulls back and rests his cheek on her heaving belly.

“You…” he tells her when her blood has ceased to race, when basic brain function has returned to her. He lifts his heavy head, places a lingering kiss just above the line of curls adorning her apex, “You’re not goin’ anywhere.”

Alex gulps and tries to catch her breath. Her chest rises and falls as her heart starts to slow to its normal rhythm. Her head drops sideways on the table, eyelashes dipping open and shut in slow motion. The last thing she sees before post-orgasmic slumber sets in is Gene’s parting poem, pinned to her fridge.

* * *

   
_Every time I think I've had enough_  
_And start heading for the door_  
_There's a very strange vibration_  
_Piercing me right through the core_  
_It says, turn around, you fool_  
_You know you love him more and more_  
_Tell me why is it so_  
_That I don't wanna let you go?_  
_I never can say goodbye, boy_  
_Oh baby, never can say goodbye…_

   
She wakes in her bed, head on his chest. She looks around, glances at the clock. Then looks up.

Gene frowns down at her, demanding as if it’s all he’s been sleeplessly thinking about for the past six hours: “So what was that? Goodbye?”

Alex smiles weakly, lowering her face in a falsified yawn. She runs a hand over his chest as she slides on top of his naked body beneath the warm covers. “A question for another time,” she murmurs, mouth dipping to his.

Gene kisses her back, hands lifting to her face, slipping under her hair to stroke her cheeks. His palms slide down her back and arms wrap round her waist, clutching her so close she thinks he may never let go. 

_END._

Find the rest of my A2A fanfic [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/812100/Mindy35).


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